Tanja Seiner Product Design & Environments

Tanja Seiner is a designer and curator based in Munich.

She devises and designs products, environments and exhibitions in collaboration with cultural institutions, corporations and non-profit organisations. Her services include strategic thinking, concept development, creative direction, design, and the curation of exhibitions and discursive formats.

Subsequent to her diploma in product design from the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design she worked as senior designer at studio Jerszy Seymour Berlin. Here she conceived consumer goods and furniture for industry (Magis, Vitra, Groupe SEB et al.) and collaborated on conceptual installations for museums amongst which MUDAM Luxembourg, MAK Vienna and Marta Herford (2007–10).

In her exhibition “Pet Market” (erstererster, Berlin 2015), Tanja enquired into the customs and preconceptions which form the relationship between people and their pets. While the exhibition “Creatures Made to Measure” at the Museum Marta Herford (Sept 2018 – Jan 2019) investigates the role of design in human-animal relationships yet further, the well-received exhibition “Touch deeper” (Lothringer13 Halle, Munich 2016–17), investigated how the technological promise of efficiency and control has changed and is changing our environment.

Tanja regularly brings her curatorial examination to design education. Previous teaching commitments include theory and practice based seminars at the design department of Kunsthochschule Kassel (2010–15) and at the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (summer term 2018).Together with Sarah Dorkenwald and Karianne Fogelberg, Tanja Seiner founded UnDesignUnit, a studio that considers design to be a significant medium and a strategy for conceiving innovative and discursive formats, thereby continuously aiming at advancing design as a critical practice.

Creatures Made to Measure – Animals and Contemporary Design

Factory farming or laboratory meat, cuddly pets or robots in animal form – the relationship between animals and humans is often the subject of hot dispute. Animals have always served an important purpose for humans. When, however, the optimization according to human expectations goes so far that animals are having to undergo cosmetic surgery and are bred artificially in laboratories, or even serve as organ donors for humans, we have to ask whether these “creatures” are even still animals at all?

The designers and artists in this exhibition ask for the “acceptable degree” of manipulation and research possibilities of replacing animal-based raw materials and even the animal itself. At the same time, they take a look at the relationships between humans and animals from new perspectives and conceive scenarios that look to the future.

UnDesignUnit

Together with Sarah Dorkenwald and Karianne Fogelberg, Tanja Seiner founded UnDesignUnit, a studio that considers design to be a significant medium and a strategy for conceiving innovative and discursive formats.
The formats proposed by UnDesignUnit are informed by a long-standing expertise in curating, writing and designing, and are aimed at showing different stakeholders in how far design may contribute to opening up new perspectives, approaches and modes of action.The challenges of our times are addressed by acknowledging their uneasy complexity and seeking out their potentiality by breaking down design into its individual components, in formal terms but also in terms of its context with regard to cause and effect.
By engaging sensory experiences and interactive or participative elements, UnDesignUnit seeks to engage audiences far beyond the design industry in a fruitful discussion about the role of design, its potentials as well as its limitations.

Touch deeper

Promising comfortable and optimized daily routines, numerous smart objects have docked onto us. What are these things (or beings?) that have moved into our homes? How are the objects that surround us changing, and how are they changing us?The exhibition “Touch deeper” at Lothringer13 Halle in Munich explores these questions with works by international designers and artists, who consider not only new technological possibilities but also the completely analog needs of our changing living spaces. They create alternative views on the efficiency and intelligence of these devices and examine how we, with an increasing number of digital companions and surroundings, want to live. Amid overwhelming technological innovations, “Touch deeper” attempts to also look at those aspects that are often ignored by the promises of a progress that has become its own end. By means of prototypical designs, different perspectives on a digitally enhanced future open up, in which the interplay between technical possibilities and human needs are recalibrated.

Pet Market

Pet Market explores the complex and diverse relationships between pets and humans from a design perspective and provides suggestions and outlooks for their shared living spaces. On the occasion of DMY – International Design Festival Berlin, Pet Market inaugurated at the erstererster gallery in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg area in June 2015. Pet Market is an invitation to be inspired while shopping, to be attracted to and seduced by, but also to question and discuss the products on display.

“An intelligently thought through project…Pet Market works at both a design theory and design practice level, can however also be enjoyed for the objects on display and what they are, with no need to search for a deeper meaning, a fact which, when combined with the uncomplicated shop-style exhibition design, makes Pet Market an eminently accessible and highly enjoyable exhibition around a subject to which only very few of us rarely give even a modicum of thought.” Alasdair Thompson, Smow Blog

Open Table

KOOPERATIVE GROSSSTADT is a recently founded housing co-operative in Munich that also serves as a platform for events and interventions all relating to the topics of architectural quality standards as well as urban living. In January 2016, a symposium with more than 20 invited “experts” – architects, residents, politicians, project developers, designers, artists – took place at the Lothringer13 Halle in Munich. With more than 300 visitors at the “Open Table”, visions and ideas for improved town planning and residential housing construction in favour of a versatile and open city were exchanged, and it was determined how these ideas for a cooperative urban life can be realised.

Interventionen

Exhibition display for models, prototypes and sketches that were created within the context of the design project „Another Cup of Tea“. On occasion of the annual „Interventionen“ exhibition at the regional council Kassel, artists and designers were invited to provide insights to their current work. The photographs of mixing fluids were created by Selina Schwank.

Installation photos: Robin Stummvoll

2015

Another Cup of Tea

A series of concepts and designs on contemporary tea culture were developed for WMF AG.

Inspired by bombillas for drinking mate, this glass bombilla with a clip-on metal sieve is perfect for drinking cocktails or making infusions from fresh or dried ingredients such as herbs, fruits or spices. A recipe book whets the appetite and inspires to develop one’s own creations.
Chai Pot allows for spices to be ground directly in the cast iron pot before adding milk, water, tea and sugar to make chai masala. The ready chai can be poured directly into the cup: the spices are filtered by the integrated removable sieve.
Teabell is a kitchen aid for measuring the time for brewing tea or for cooking. Inspired by a gong, a bobbin hits a floating metal plate when the tea or meal is ready. It can be used as a lid on top of the cup or left on the saucer.

Cooperation with teilchenbeschleuniger

2011–2013

TOOLS Publication

Design provides tools that widen the user´s scope of action. TOOLS was the title of a design course taught by Tanja Seiner at the School for Arts and Design Kassel. It resulted in a publication featuring designs by Natascha Burk, Saskia Drebes, Dominic Ender, Joost Fähser, Gesina Glodek, Julian Herden and Nils Oertel. The array of projects includes experimental music instruments, lightshow-generators, herb distilleries and thermoforming machines for glass.

TOOLS
Tanja Seiner, Oliver Vogt (Ed.)
ISBN 978-3-945824-00-9

2015

Easy Frame

Easy Frame is a patented system for the quick and easy mounting of canvas and paper on a stretcher-frame without any additional tools. Slotted wooden bars are connected to plastic corners and are fixated with metal pins.

Cooperation with Tim Mackerodt, Andreas Munk

Client: Hahnemühle

2013

Germines

For the exhibition RES PUBLICA/RES PRIVATA, the glass façade of the gallery L40 Berlin was transformed into a thriving scenery of microbes during night-time. The growth of the microorganisms could be observed from the crossroads Rosa-Luxemburgstrasse/Torstrasse – a busy part of Berlin, which reflects the growth and transformation of the illustrated microcosm. The exhibition was curated by Susanne Prinz.

Mini-T

Size and function of Mini-T are reduced to the essentials: Due to its slot that is accessible from two sides, slices of bread in different shapes and sizes can be toasted. Bread does not get stuck, no crumbles are gathering inside.

Collaboration with Dominik Hehl

2010

First Supper

In her position as designer and project manager for Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop in Berlin (2007-2010), Tanja Seiner was in charge of projects for the furniture and consumer goods industry, and the conception and realization of editions and spatial installations for design galleries and museums. The here shown installation „First Supper“ at the MAK Vienna was created on site by melting polycapralactone wax. It provided the functional basis for a public dinner to discuss the idea of an „amateur society“.

Pacman

Pacman is a soft armchair with large overhanging arms, which can be expanded and retracted. It is a buffer for noisy surroundings and functions as a temporary retreat, for example in open space offices. It offers the possibility to change perspective, to retreat for a short while, relax or concentrate.

2007

Minimal

Crisp sound that has fallen under the hammer at the christmas auction of erstererster gallery, Berlin. Pared-down minimalist style gingerbread that that comes without icing or decoration.

2008

ZigZag

At Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop in Berlin Tanja Seiner was designing various projects for the consumer goods industry (2004-2005 and 2007-2010). Among them were numerous designs and concept studies for kitchen appliances. These hairdryers for Moulinex have, besides their striking shape and extended handle, another distinguishing feature: the rubber-nozzle can be squeezed to direct the airflow.

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